CFTC settles oil manipulation case

Exchange Shorts

Financial Conduct Authority rewrote rules on client money and custody assets following a series of fines in the industry over failures in custody and safeguarding of assets, City Wire reported. EU’s Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) aims to publish energy indexes based on power and gas market data. ACER will start to collect information about transactions in Europe’s power and gas markets next year onwards.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission reached an agreement to settle its oil manipulation case against Arcadia Petroleum and Parnon Energy, Reuters reported. According to jointly published letter by CFTC and the defendants, “the parties need additional time to finalize the language of the proposed settlement agreement and to seek the approval of the full Commission to file the proposed settlement agreement with the Court.”

ICE CEO Jeffrey Sprecher stated that global capital markets have become too complex for the industry and regulators to understand, and he advocated that markets should be simplified, The Trade News reported. Sprecher also stated that the failure in understanding what caused the Flash Crash of May 6 2010 indicated a need to reduce the complexity of modern market structrure.

London Metals Exchange CEO Garry Jones stated that the global gold price setting benchmark or “fix” is susceptible to manipulation. Jones was quoted saying that “when people sit around a table and lift a flag in the gold market and say this is where the price is, obviously it is open to manipulation if it’s done in this opaque way.” LME plans to offer an alternative to the silver fix when the system is disbanded in August, Reuters reported.

National Stock Exchange advised foreign investors not to increase their long positions in bond futures as their overall holding in government debt had reached 92.82% of the allowed limit, Reuters reported. NSE also released a circular stating that foreign institutional investors can invest in bond futures only after their holdings in cash and futures comes below 85% or permissible limits.

About the Author

Bernardo Mariano brings to ERDesk his experience structuring private deals for the acquisition of mutual exchanges. Prior to joining ERDesk Bernardo worked as a Director for Instinet and later, CEO of Reuters' Bondex. He holds an MS in Economics from University of Illinois and an MIA in Finance from Columbia University. He can be reaced at be reached at mariano@erdesk.com.